Be careful, Kirigiri had said. The mastermind has painted a target on your back.
Don't go anywhere alone with Fukawa, Togami had said.
As Naegi stared at Fukawa, blocking the only door out of the room, he was starting to think he should have paid a little more attention to those warnings. He normally wouldn't be frightened of her, not when she had her usual personality instead of the red-eyed laughing serial killer's – but there was something in her eyes now that made him want to back away.
But did he really want to run from her? He'd considered her a friend until a few days ago, even though he wasn't sure whether she felt the same way about him, and friends weren't supposed to run from one another.
They weren't supposed to lock each other up, either.
Naegi pushed that thought away and did his best to smile at Fukawa. "You want to talk about Togami? Well, uh, I haven't really seen him today. Sorry."
She didn't move from her place in front of the door. "You s-sent him away."
"I did what?" Naegi didn't remember doing anything like that.
"Last night," Fukawa said, her eyes glinting from behind her glasses. "He offered himself up to you right there in the hall, where anyone could hear."
"Oh – you were there for that?" Naegi hadn't thought any of the rest of the group had still been around to hear the end of his argument with Togami.
"I heard e-e-everything." Fukawa began to smile, a flush creeping up her neck and across her face as she took a step towards him. "I heard him beg for you to spend just one more night with him – that you could have him anywhere, even right there in the middle of the hall, as long as you gave him what he needed just one more time."
Naegi's mouth fell open. "That's – uh, that's not exactly –"
"And you r-refused him," she went on, sweat beading across her forehead and trickling down her heated cheeks as she advanced. "You d-d-denied him what he wanted. You left him alone with his filthy cravings unfulfilled, gave him no choice but to return to his room and try to reach a pale mockery of satisfaction with the limitations of his own shameful fingers, grasping and –"
"That's not what happened!" Naegi turned scarlet as he tried to banish that image of Togami from his mind.
"N-no?" Fukawa asked, halfway down the aisle towards him now. "Then why did my perfectly dressed White Knight come to the bathhouse last night with his shirt untucked and his hair wild?"
"Uh – well –" Naegi didn't have an explanation for that one. He'd kind of hoped everyone else had had other things to worry about.
"You d-did that to him. You drove him to the brink, promised him release and then scorned him."
"Look, I don't really think this is any of your business," Naegi said, trying to pretend that his cheeks weren't on fire with an embarrassed blush.
"You touched him." She was close enough now that he could hear her breath coming heavily, her shoulders heaving with it. "You put your hands all over him. You knocked my White Knight off his pedestal into the muck, and anyone can touch him now. Even me."
Naegi didn't like the way she said that – like something had happened. "Wait, what do you mean by that? Where is he?"
"I don't know. Somewhere else." She leaned forward, eyes gleaming, and Naegi couldn't help leaning away until his back hit the wall. "I was looking for you."
Naegi was really starting to get nervous now. She'd been looking for him when Togami was an option? "Why, exactly?"
"To see what he sees."
Fukawa's hands hit the wall on either side of Naegi's head, and whatever it was she was trying to see, she was looking from only a few inches away.
Naegi gulped. "Look, I understand that you're – uh – not very happy about what happened between Togami and me, but can we talk about it another time? I'm supposed to be searching this floor, and –"
A panicked scream from above them cut him off. "Someone! Come quick!"
"That was Asahina!" Was she all right? Had she found something? A new, stronger set of fears knocked his concern about Fukawa aside. "We have to go find her!" He tried to duck under Fukawa's arm to move towards the door.
Fukawa blocked him. "We're not done talking –"
"We don't have time for this!" Naegi snapped, out of patience with whatever game Fukawa was playing. If she wanted to bother him, that was one thing – but stopping him from helping Asahina when she could be in trouble was something else. "Move! Now!"
Fukawa's eyes went wide at the order, and she jerked back like he'd struck her heart, hands flying back from the wall to clutch at her chest. Naegi didn't have time to worry about her now, though, not when he had to find Asahina. He ran out of the A/V room and up to the third floor where Asahina had been searching.
"What happened? Are you all right?" he asked, as soon as he caught sight of her standing in the hall.
"It's awful!" Asahina's shoulders trembled as she gestured back down the hall. "I checked the rec room, and – and –" She took an unsteady step in the direction of the stairs. "I need to get the others!"
Before Naegi could stop her, she'd bolted for the lower floors.
The rec room? Naegi could see the door standing open, and as he approached, the dread returned to his stomach, stronger than ever. He thought he might be sick as he steeled himself to look inside. If it was who he thought –
Celeste stood in the middle of the rec room, horribly battered and barely able to stay on her feet. Naegi's fears about who else it could have been fell to the back of his mind in the wake of new worries for his injured friend. "Celeste? What happened?"
As Asahina returned with Ogami and Hagakure, Celeste explained. Her story was almost too bizarre to understand, with a mysterious man attacking her and dragging Yamada away – but with the Justice Hammer 1 lying there on the ground and the photograph she'd produced from the camera, what else could any of them think? Was an attack by a robotic assailant really any stranger than being trapped in a school by a robotic bear?
"You're saying this individual headed down to the second floor?" Ogami demanded. "But that's where Kirigiri was meant to search. She could be in danger!"
As they ran down to the second floor, Fukawa met them on the stairs coming up, her eyes tracking on Naegi as soon as he was in her line of sight. Her flush had receded, and she looked more or less like her normal self. "What's going on up here?"
"We're looking for Kirigiri and Yamada," Naegi told her. "Have you seen them?"
"I haven't seen anything," Fukawa said, shaking her head. "Not since you ran from me in the A/V room."
"They have to be here somewhere," Asahina said. "Let's keep looking!"
Ogami cocked her head. "I think I hear something – coming from the library?"
When they ran to the library and flung the door open, they found Yamada just staggering to his feet, looking even worse than Celeste. Justice Hammer 2 lay on the ground nearby.
"He hit me," Yamada gasped, blood streaming down his face. "That guy – Robo Justice. He hit me!"
His story might have been absurd, but it did match Celeste's, even down to the photograph.
"We need to get him down to the nurse's office," Celeste said, concern evident on her face as she looked at Yamada's wounds. "His injuries need to be treated without delay."
Yamada had to lean on Ogami's arm to make it down the steps as they all escorted him to the nurse's office.
"Robo Justice attacked me on the third floor while I was searching for Alter Ego," Yamada explained, settling weakly on one of the beds. "And then he dragged me to the library and hit me with Justice Hammer 2. It must have been thirty or forty minutes ago."
"So we all would have been in the cafeteria together," Asahina said, frowning. "Sakura, Kirigiri, Naegi, Hagakure, and me."
"And Kirigiri wouldn't let Naegi leave," Fukawa added.
Ogami gave her a strange look. "How do you know that?"
"I was watching, obviously," Fukawa said. "And I saw that you," her gaze snapped towards Asahina, "ate five donuts while you were waiting. Is that how you get those things so big – by loading them down with fat?"
"Eh?" Asahina looked taken aback by the sudden accusation.
Naegi frowned. So the five of them had been together, with Fukawa watching, while Celeste and Yamada had been attacked. They'd all been together, meaning that the only people without alibis for the attacks were Ishimaru – and Togami.
